Huhtamaki PPL’s Thane plant is its oldest one and, like all of the company’s other plants spread across the country, is equipped with state-of-the-art tools and machinery—from design to printing to laminating to slitting. Packaging South Asia visited the sprawling campus to get an inside view of the plant in operation and met with Suhael Pereira, general factory manager of the Thane plant.

“This is a well laid down plant structure which is very lean and highly organized. Not only this, one of the biggest assets is the quality and experience of employees that we have at the plant,” says Pereira, who has been working with HPPL for almost two decades now. There are 315 employees currently working in the Thane plant. At the time of our visit, the plant had 2,137 accident-free days, pointing to the fact that employee safety was the utmost priority for the company.

Being close to the port, almost 70% of the plant output is exported to places such as North America, Latin America, Africa, Middle East and North Africa. The plant caters to flexible packaging needs of some of the biggest brands in the food and FMCG industry, such as HUL, Nestle, Coca Cola, Pepsi, Colgate Palmolive, and Mondelez, to name just a few.

The products made at the Thane plant are very high value-added ones such as cold seal laminates, soap wrappers, shrink sleeves, battery label applications, and more.

On the shop floor, there are two gravure printing presses, one 9-color press from Cerutti and one 8-color press from SAM and a flexo press from Aquaflex. There are two laminators from Nordmeccanica and three slitters from Atlas. There is a hot melt machine for soap wrappers as well. During the past year, the company has made sound investments in the cylinder making division where it has commissioned one engraver and one coppering machine. The cylinder making division located at the Thane plant caters to both Thane plant and Silvassa plant.

Regular interaction with customers is a vital exercise for HPPL. There are ‘customer champions’ who often interact with customers. Pereira himself looks after customers from Latin America.

Capacity expansion

As of today, the total capacity of Thane plant stands at 600 tons per month. However, there are plans to enhance the capacity in near future by adding another line consisting of a printing press, a laminator and a slitter. Once this line gets commissioned, the capacity is expected to increase by 200 tons per month to reach 800 tons per month.
“There is no concrete decision when it comes to capacity expansion of the Thane plant. The issue is just at a very initial stage of discussion,” informs Pereira.

In-house design

HPPL’s in-house design department, also known as the graphic excellence cell, is located on the campus of the Thane plant and takes care of Silvassa, Thane, Hyderabad and Rudrapur plants. The responsibility of the graphic excellence cell is to convert input artwork received from customers and apply it as per HPPL’s gravure printing capabilities; it changes or modifies the artwork as per HPPL’s printing machine requirements. However, it is ensured that during the modification process, there is no deterioration in the quality. Rather, the cell makes sure that the quality is improved if it is not up to the mark. If there are any changes in the artwork, HPPL informs the customer about it as an ethical business practice. The prepress design team is dedicated only to the gravure technology.